Alola has Police, what do they even do. why is an 11 year old solving all the crime

You ever think like “Okay but what if someone just like… punched that guy.” when you play these games. Some of those trainers seem like big, sturdy adults, I’m pretty sure that soldier 76 cop dude alone could push over most of the Team Skull dudes and tell them to smarten up.

I like the idea that pokemon are generally so weak they’re safe enough for the average 5th grader to play with without getting hurt. Like a fireblast looks really destructive but really it just feels like someone turned a hairdryer uncomfortably high.That’s why you can set a big plant dude on fire and it only phases him enough that he can’t fight anymore but can still apparently walk around and cut tiny shrubs down.

Yugioh went weird a bit. Because it started out with a guy literally black-magic devil-bargaining you into playing a game for your soul (and he was the GOOD guy), blinding and maiming everything from pedophiles to just run of the mill assholes. Then it somehow devolved into basically just card fights until the very end.

Seto Kaiba was just one of the many characters who got mindwiped/mindraped by Yugioh over a game. I forget the reason. But apparently he was popular enough that the author later brought him back, and used the cardgame over and over.

Of course, perhaps the intention was always to use the cardgame within the story. The author just wanted a break between introducing Seto and bringing him back.

***
Of course, Yugioh’s not the only person who mindwipes people in games. A classmate brought in a cursed jar to wipe Yugi. Later he got a friend who also had a millennium artifact, who used it to mindwipe his D&D group just because.

I think Rheios was talking about Pegasus in that example there. As for Kaiba, he had wanted Solomon Moto’s (Yugi’s grandpa) Blue Eyes White Dragon card. When Solomon refused to sell it, Kaiba kidnapped him and stole it only to tear it up on the flimsy excuse that it was to ensure it could never be used against him. Yugi dueled him in order to regain his grandpa’s honor (As far as I can tell. That part’s a bit screwy.), and transformed into the first canon appearance of the Pharaoh. After he won the duel, Atem (the Pharaoh) banished Kaiba’s ‘evil side’ (but not his asshole side) to the shadow realm.

Also, since I believe you’re referencing the manga with those other examples(or at least season 0), I’m referring to that particular duel being the mainstream Yu-Gi-Oh’s first canon appearance of the Pharaoh.

I think he’s talking about season 0 (you might be able to find some episodes on youtube), which didn’t focus on the card game outside of the 1 or 2 episodes revolving around Seto Kaiba, and had a significantly more sadistic Yami.

there was also the whole psychic dueling stuff, where they could literally kill you with a card (regardless of whether or not you where in a duel), while manifesting the card as a actual thing. it was never as powerful as a shadow dual though, but one guy did nearly kill the main with a lazer sword til he got eaten by a giant evil gecko.
that of course was removed from the dub because 4kids was still a thing at the time.

Yeah, Pokemon are weak at first, but they are, in the final analysis, *monsters* that are born & bred for *fighting*
And *children* are, by definition young & naive of the world at large, tasked with the responsibility for training them to grow strong as fighters? Really; children?
Yeah, there’s no way that’ll backfire, right?http://www.memes.com/img/566924

I like to that usually it takes several years of intense training for pokemon to get to a high enough level to be dangerous to humans, but our protaginist (and his buddies) are just some sort of pokemon savants

Pretty sure to be a brain surgeon in the Yugioh world requires having knowledge of a medical themed deck and having it on you at all times for reasons. Can you have a different deck? Nope. Gotta be at face value. And god forbid you don’t have your deck with you when [insert bullshit] comes along!

But Gladion isn’t actually a member of Team Skull, much less a member of rank. He’s just someone they pay to do dirty work for them which they don’t want to do themselves.

Jared being confused for an Admin or similar would actually have the grunts all looking up to him, possibly even fearing him. “Whoa, who’s this guy? Guzma hasn’t mentioned him before – he must be some sort of secret elite badass that the boss keeps under wraps!”

Except I’m pretty sure the ‘gh’ is from Germanic descent and exclusive to the end of a syllable, while I believe the ‘tion’ is Latin derived, and only functions as such when a whole syllable. While English has many languages it has borrowed from, the way a word is pronounced usually keeps consistent with one derivative language. Certainly each syllable does.

Your point is correct, however, I believe the Ghoti thing was used hyperbolically in a textbook way back when to illustrate just how convoluted the English language is for non-native speakers to learn…i.e. the sort of people who didn’t grow up learning in school about how English cornered all the other languages in some back alley and rifled through their pockets for spare vocabulary. =D

Nah, as an expert on Pokémon*, I can safely say that everyone knows a group of grimers is called a “dump”.

E.g. Look Ma, a dump of wild grimers!

*That Guy does not actually play Pokémon and as such has no idea what he’s doing. Accept his statements at your own risk. That Guy is not liable for effects up to and including: rash, death, humiliation, mega-death, mind-blowing, hyper-death, spontaneous combustion, ADD (automatic death disorder), and intense feelings of saltiness. Time wasted reading this post is non-refundable and may not be exchanged for store credit.

I imagine Jared would be used to this sort of thing, as it’s probably how his home country works. But he didn’t have pokemon until setting out from home so I wonder if he used to just step past people. Now I’m wondering if his pigeon fancying is his outlet for the cultural norm of collecting animals where he’s from. All that time his parents wanted him to catch Pokemon, not realising pigeons where his true calling.

As amusing as this would be, sadly the world and info pokemon gives us disputes that; the fact is, if these crawny lil kids commanded their pokemon to attack the peeps trying to move them, they would be dead. Charmander is a foot tall lizard that breathes fire hot enough to melt steel. Tyranitar are noted to reduce mountains to rubble. Gastly is made of strong enough poison gass to kill a human in seconds, and so on and so forth. And this is without mentioning the legendary pokemon or the ones that are creepy rather than dangerous

Pokemon are adorable mini-kaijuu that indeed have the raw power to be used to conqour the world, to the extent that in the ancient war central to XY’s plot…. humanity never developed personal weapons, just pokemon, and it still almost reduced kalos to a smoking crater, They really should not let 11 year olds be allowed to go out and control these monsters, but no-one ever said the adults in pokemon where intelligent or effective in any way. good to see the 11 year olds benevolent enough to become a kind overlord at least, and that the skull kids are nice enough to just take cashmoney from folks that defeated them :D

I’m assuming here that the weight doesn’t include the air in its lungs. Obviously it would weigh an extra ton or so. Being that it’s 47 feet long, its weight would fluctuate wildly between inhaling and exhaling just from the massive amounts of air being moved in and out.

Haha oh yes, I see it now! That finally makes all those entries clearer in context for me. They contradict each other and reality (well, “reality”) so much there’s always been many an eyebrow raised after reading them.

Lazy professors outsourcing all that work, then publishing it all under their (much more academic) name, starting the cycle of Citogenesis!

Which would make sense if sun/moon didn’t have an adult scientist reading an excerpt from her own pokedex that exactly matches the Sun version entry for that pokemon (the one about leaving corsola bits in its wake).

In S/M at least, the pokedex is less an 11 year old doing field research and more a common device that people carry around to keep track of their own pokemon journeys. The local tourist center even has a special promotion giving a free camera app to anyone carrying the latest model.

They really should not let 11 year olds be allowed to go out and control these monsters
Well, except if it is to train them into soldiers. As far as fan theories go, the Kanto war theory makes a lot of sense :)

I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘Train them into soldiers’ but certainly ‘teach them to respect the power of these animals’. I mean, you think an eleven year old saying “Yaaaaay I’m going on my pokemon journey!” is dangerous? How about a sixteen year old saying “So you say this thing can melt steel beams? Iiiiiinteresting…”

I mean, that’s why I keep Ho-oh in the computer, I don’t want anyone else achieving their dreams, what if their dream was to be the very best, like no one ever was? That’s my dream dang it. Its also the reason I have an Absol in my party, its the disaster pokemon, when ever a human sees one, supposedly something bad happens…(ie, my opponent loses)
mwhahahahahahaha

Pokemon are sort of a personal scale nuclear deterrent. In the earlier Pokemon Adventures manga, characters were ordering their pokemon to kill other characters all the time… but the targets own pokemon stopped them.

The Team Skull grunts look like what you’d get if the Thug Life trend and the Goth trend got together and had a baby, and that baby was kidnapped and used by people who were just too lazy to really make it work.

I mean, seriously. I’m not super far into the game yet, but so far, the Team Skull grunts seem like the most inept group out of all the teams.

I feel like that crisp vainglorious criminal tang of Team Rocket has just been slowly watered down in strength and repackaged again every new generation. Team Rocket was doing it almost ironically as their showboating cover identity, but the later “Teams” now just sort of felt like either “tough guy” street gangs, or occasionally a rich guy playing big game sport hunter with their buddies.

I agree. Team Rocket in the original games was decent (if ineffectual), in Johto they had actually made a decent comeback (Azalea town notwithstanding). Team Aqua and Magma I can kind of understand as environmental groups gone WAY extreme. Team Galactic was just a Team Rocket rip-off, and Team Plasma disturbingly reminds me of some cults I’ve herd about. So yeah, quality in these ‘gangs’ have gone way down over the generations. And I stopped at Team Plasma because I’ve only recently acquired a 3DS and have yet to get a copy of Pokémon X or Y.

Flare were people who were disgusted with how greedy and conflict filled the world was and whose solution to the problem was unleashing a super weapon to cull the population so there would be more stuff to go around.

You can prove White Ganondorf and his team wrong just by using the mechanics of the game.

When you are starting your journey, sure, you take everything that people give you, but once you reach the point where you can casually blow 10,000 poke on clothes, you can start giving back.

No matter what the person has done for me. No matter how many times I talk to them. No matter that it does absolutely nothing for me in-game, I ALWAYS give the max amount they suggest. Sure, it’s only about $10 each time, but their reactions to your generosity is just wonderful.

I can understand where the Albino King of the Gerudoes is coming from, in that there are people who take and take and never give back once they are in a position to give back, but his methods for doing so? Not so much.

I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be. Alola’s place in the greater Pokemon world is just getting started. They have the old island traditions, but the Professor is hoping to build a proper League someday (I assume it’ll be finished just in time for you to win it) and Team Skull’s motivation is “screw you old man, anarchy is cool and that means we’re tough!”

They are probably the most realistic antagonistic group, though. There is even an NPC that comments about them as if they are a non-threatening nuisance; something like, “This is what happens when the youth get too bored.”
Team Aqua or Magma actually existing in a rational world is ridiculous, any person with middle school science ed can see both their plans are disastrous a mile away. Some punk-ass kids tryin’ to act hard and make a quick buck off minor crime and avoid work? That is totally reasonable. That is in fact a thing that happens. Plus, towards the end when it is falling apart (is that really a spoiler? I think that this surprises no one, and I am avoiding real spoilers) a bunch of them are coming to their senses and say how they’ve been wasting their life, and/or need to get a real job.
Best enemy team yet from a realism stand point.

Team magma and aqua is what happens when it’s considered perfectly normal for kids to drop out of school for as long as they want to go on adventures when they are ten-eleven years old.

I’ve always thought that Archie was probably smarter than Maxie was, because at least Archie had some sort of reason to think that expanding the oceans wouldn’t turn out completely horribly (Pacifidlog Town seems to do pretty well for itself without land) where as Maxie seems to have forgotten that almost everything needs water to survive.

Your second paragraph draws on faulty data, as Maxie never wanted to remove the oceans entirely; his goal was to “expand the land, thus creating more habitats for Pokemon and people”. Both leaders were very obviously idiots because both of their plans at the height of success would be reversed in very short order due to the natural water cycle. All that water you’re dehydrating/flooding the world with has to come from somewhere.

Archie would have been better served going after Groudon and using him to melt the ice caps if he wanted more ocean.

Yes, but as someone trying to pass themselves off as a scientist, Maxie PROBABLY should have realized that expanding the land by evaporating huge swaths of ocean or the use of volcanoes is going to cause more trouble than it’s worth. Archie has the excuse of being a dude who just thinks waterworld was a good movie and dolphins are cool

Video game logic at its finest. Can’t climb up cliffs a 10 year old child has no problem leaping off, forcing you to walk through grass. Kindergarteners getting their cash stolen by random kids in the woods yet no one does anything. The intense laziness of just not scooting past said bush but having a captive animal chop it down.

On that note, Jared is gonna be upset. This is one of those rare instances he’s good for something.

personally I believe that humans in the pokemon are just as resilient as pokemon themselves what with them being highly specialized pokemon and all, like how humans in our world are highly specialized animals. explains how humans survive in such harsh conditions or seemingly have a secondary type themselves, or can withstand multiple thunder bolts to the face without outright dying

Kinda like One Piece (considering some of the punishment baseline humans take and are still able to walk around, let alone not die), I figure Pokémon is what I call one of the “Ani-Nerf Universes” which is to say OUR universe is in fact the Nerf universe where everything is shockingly delicate, and the baseline of their universe is superhuman to us.

Where a man can be immolated in steel melting flame and just have a bit of pain black coating over himself he can just brush off. After all, it wasn’t THAT hot, it was just hot enough to melt steel.

Only in the sense of a Kryptonian living with other Kryptonians on Krypton. Ash is slightly more athletic and durable then a normal kid his age cause of all the running around he does in the wild while taking a fair amount of physical punishment, but nothing special in a world where anybody else could do that too.

The commander could literally punt these two Skull punks into the stratosphere and they’ll be fine.

Like the Kryptonians you mentioned, if he got transported here, he’d be very confused and horrified the first time he used his pokemon ‘OH JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK PIKACHU I JUST SAID USE THUNDERBOLT WHY DID HIS HEAD EXPLODE FUCK FUCK FUCK”

Ash lives in a world where nearly every thing on the food chain, even the GODDAMN GRASS, would be an apex predator in our world. It makes sense that Humans are fucking tough.

I’ll leave off with this: SCP 354: The pokemon portal in all it’s nightmare.

There is the theory that because he saw Ho-oh (in the beginning credits) and his dream was to become the very best, ho-oh granted ash eternal life, kinda like how when someone is turned into a vampire, they stay the same age (ie interview with a vampire kirsten dunst)

Aura. Ash unconsciously uses Aura to be able to carry heavy pokemon like it’s nothing. Were he to train with someone like Sir Aaron (who is heavily implied to be somewhere on Ashes family tree), we’d be having arguments over who would win in a fight between Ash and Pre-Z Goku.

I like to think Team Skull is a product of this society. They failed the trials,they’re around that angsty teenage age, the police and population are too lazy to do anything about them and their leader is a possible sociopath. I say “possible” because claiming to not fear anyone or anything in Alola isn’t a big claim. While Team Rocket has been the standard BW broke the mold on “good” bad guys that Team Skull just doesn’t measure up to.

Yeah I think Team Skull is just supposed to be a bunch of directionless numbskulls that got out of hand because nobody rerouted their energy back before they took over an entire town for their party-spot. Like, mostly the shit you see them doing is trying to steal a street sign and taking a low-level pokemon from a literal preschooler. Presumably the fact your character can’t just push them aside is the fact you’re literally 11 years old.

I’m also getting the feeling that the Aether Foundation are the real bad guys. Considering that it’s quite possible that YOU are the rival and that Hau is supposed to be the Hero (You complete the trials before he does and he has the starter that is weak to yours), it wouldn’t be that absurd to discover that the Aether Foundation are the real “Bad Team” that only allows Skull to exist because it gives them a scapegoat to point at.

Well, in a world where its perfectly acceptable to force animals to fight to the death for human gain wouldn’t a group intent on preserving said animals be seen as “evil” to the vast majority? They are going against society by acknowledging the harm being done to the animals, which would make them the bad guys in this particular story.

In the first game and very early in the show it is explained that pokemon seek out each other to fight even without human influence. That pokemon often seek out and challenge humans in hopes that they’ll be caught and trained. It’s a symbiotic relationship, humans train, care for and travel with pokemon giving them better challenges and access to places they otherwise couldn’t get to, and in return humans get protection and companions.

Ash even asks early on why pikachu keeps getting attacked by wild pokemon and the explanation was that wild pokemon are often jealous of pokemon that have snagged a trainer.

That was an age when non-pokemon animals were shown in the manga or eluded to in the anime. Now, there are no non-pokemon animals, so the pokemon are explained in a predator-prey way to better develop the ecosystem of this world. Its one thing to say Zangoos and Sciviper have a rivalry, its another to say the winner eats the loser, a line drawn clearly between the games and anime.

The last time I remember this topic about how fighting isn’t a “good” thing was when N asked Ash about why he uses Pokemon to fight only to never get an answer. Literally, they get interrupted and the conversation ends there.

Heh, your description of Fire Blast reminds me of the time I got a critical hit Hyper Beam on a level 2 Pidgey with my level 100 pokemon. I remember thinking to myself, “Ya, sure it ‘fainted,’ just don’t check its pulse…”.

Do you watch the Pokemon Generations anime shorts? In one of the recent ones, they showed a big battle between all the Unova gym leaders and the evil team grunts. The leader whose gimmick is being a martial arts master just ran past the fighting Pokemon and started punching out the grunts himself. I swear it’s one of the most satisfying moments in the entire franchise.

I’ve been playing Pokemon Sun, and, in this case at least, I think nobody punches team skull members because they just… feel too bad for them. Team Skull is 100% officially made up of everybody who basically failed at Alola’s weird… alolaness. Nobody takes them seriously, the ‘big offense’ that get their base raided is taking ONE MOUSE, nobody respects them, they never succeed at anything, they can’t afford to keep the power on… They’re like the legless puppy of organized crime; no matter how hard they’re TRYING to bite you, punishing them feels cruel.

I’ve got a theory about most anime, including Pokemon. The characters aren’t as super-powered as they appear. In reality, stone and metal (and other structural materials) in anime worlds are only slightly tougher than styrofoam, and gravity is weaker. There are a few materials or forging techniques that can make actual strong materials which would put them as durable as their real-world counterparts, but these are rare.

My personal theory is that the only reason the winner of the pokemon battle gets their way is because of the subtle implied threat that if you *don’t* do what they say, they’ll turn their pokemon on you next.

I started thinking about this while playing Sun/Moon as well lol. I’m supposed to be the good guy, right? But ultimately it seems like I work by the same rules as they do: if someone’s stronger than you, you have to do what they say or you’ll be destroyed.

I would have liked the idea that Jared brought in Mr.Fish to solve the problem… who happens to chew on those rascals. All the while Commander trying to pull them out of Mr.Fish’s mouth and contemplating why he ever thought calling in Jared could have been a good idea :D

hate new pokemon:/ i grew on pokemon from start to diamond and pearl – i loved it, but from black and white he was so nerfed… like – omg, ground is imunne against lightning, he stopped using brain, he stopped using countershield – one of his own move, he stopped using dance moves from contest, why they dont simply finally swap him? only save grace black and white was charizard, and XYZ Ash Gekouga, missing tournament that lasted 10-15 episodes and now only about 4:/ wish Mr Fish was here to Hyperbeam them.. dont like Sun and Moon anime, yeah ash finally look as child, but after 15 some years? sorry for writing a lot things what i dont like:D needed vent… love Mr Fish forever and ever!

On the other hand, maybe that plant dude is just so resilient that it could jump into a burning building and come out with no more than a slight singe. Either all Pokemon are really weak or all Pokemon are ridiculously strong–it’d look the same.

In theory, as implied in your post, the threat is that humans will use their pokemon to force other humans to do things (that is, if a trainer’s pokemon get knocked out, suddenly enemy pokemon are very physically intimidating). But even the rockets only used the _threat_ of actual violence, never, you know, actual violence against humans. As long as it’s just a threat, the commander can take out the trash all he wants!

When you get to the root of Team Skull’s purpose, and the reasons why so many of them joined, maybe, punching them isn’t what you really want to do. More like, what the Commander did. Gently, but firmly, relocate them a few feet to the side. They’re really kind of pitiable, as even while they’re talking a lot of smack, they’re just hurt, insecure, and possibly broken kids desperate for affection, and attention. Not saying it excuses what they do, but it kind of helps one understand that they’re not truly evil, just misguided.

Not gonna lie I actually really dig team skull, probably in my top 2 or 3 organized groups, good or evil, in the pokemans world. Also from what I saw in my playthrough, it sounded like Ya Boy Guzma is one of the few people in the pokemon world to get physical. All stemming from what could be an abusive home until he had enough and fought back and beat up his dad. Guzma is your typical thug, who seems to have a stranglehold on an entire town in alola and his crew runs rampant, but at the same time you kind of feel for them cause they are described as stereotypical ‘losers’ that have come under the Boss Guzma, a loser like them that got fed up and decided to make something of himself, although in a bad way. I don’t know, this is just how I saw it, a lot is speculation, I could be wrong, but I like to see it this way.

They are pretty lucky that it was Commander who ran into them first and not Jared… Having all your Pokemon eaten by a giant sea serpent and then being blasted with a Hyperbeam would NOT make for a fun afternoon

I love Team Skull, they’re a fucking delight every time I see them. They’re such dorky tryhards. I decided months before the game came out I’d cosplay as a female grunt and I feel this was the best choice I’ve made this year. Bless those annoying teens

My Bewear is 7 feet tall, 300 lbs, and can Hammer Arm just about anything to death in one hit. I’m pretty sure I could say “rip his arms off, Chewie” and whatever team skull member was in my way would be moving pretty fast.

do we get to see… THE EPIC RETURN OF THE FANTASTIC MR. FISH!? I bet that would be hilarious.

jared understands what they are talking about, and because of Mr. Fish, gets into a pokemon fight, probably ends up destroying a couple of walls, and then we see kratos, DAD OF WAR, and like umpteen other badass characters of singularly massive destructive abilities… and then they all cheer to see jared become awesome outside the paradox moment that happened because of thinking of time travel.

although I really enjoyed how commander distracted her with a madeup saying just to keep her from causing the very issue she sort of somehow inadvertently caused. by thinking of the rules of timetravel.

just saying, I would totally expect kratos to clap for jared causing massive amounts of structural damage, and then probably say something as he fixed the hole he made with his laser fish. lol

we can all have our own little headcanon fantasies. besides… jared is funny. lol

Commander should prolly get himself a Pokémon at some point. Obviously not a Bug type.

For C.B., the ideal Pokémon would be something with good physical stats, something reasonably mundane – no fire breathing or psychic BS, no humanoid shapes, no poison. Not a flyer, because flying pets suck. Not a plant, because a Plant type could pwn Mr. Fish and that would start an arms race with Jared, and once an arms race begins, Kratos and Gannondorf have to get involved and down that path lies madness, down the path of madness lies SPARTA, and then Leonidas has to show up again…

I’m thinking Poochyena/Mightyena for a Big Dog type Pokémon, or Lillipup/Herdier/Stoutland for a Not So Big Dog type Pokémon. Minccino/Cinccino would also be great, because a Big Badass Dudy can have an adorable little pet, and if you mock him, he can just ignore you, and it’s Super Effective, because he has an adorable lil’ pet.